Despite
by Charlie L.E. Scarwood
Summary: „Look at me." He was twenty-one years old, and she was just eighteen. He had watched her close her eyes, as if the motion could make him disappear. He had not asked for this, either, but they had it, and it was what it was. She would have to look at him at some point during the evening.


p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"em(23.10.16) A/N: Heyo. So, I'm writing a fanfiction called Teenagers, and behind that story is an entire Family Tree made on ancestry . com, which is actually the known Black Family Tree plus like... 450 OCs? Yeah. So I'm writing that story, but I also sometimes write little snippets about others in the tree - so this is a one-shot about Charis Josephine Greengrass, born 1933 to Sebastian Frederick Greengrass and Gwendolyn Myles, and Cetus Lycoris Black, born to Lycoris Circinus Black and Louella Demetrice Selwyn. it's not explicit, but still rated M for adult themes. But yeah, no details, really./em/p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"emCheck out Teenagers! I haven't updated in a year but I'll be changing that hopefully in a few days' time./em/p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"emHappy reading (GODIHAVEN'TPUBLISHEDINAWHILE)/em/p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"emAlso, if there a grammatical errors anywhere, PLEASE TELL ME I HATE THEM./em/p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"emCheers,/em/p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"emCharlie/em/p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Lying next to each other now, she thought back on her wedding day. Before that day, they had seen each other thrice. Once, it had been a formal dinner, along with ten other family members. The second time, they had still not been alone. It had been a party, and they had only caught a single second's glance at each other before they both disappeared into the chattering, socialising crowd again. The third time, they had met purely by chance, and though the two of them had tried engaging in a conversation, nothing much had come of it. The awkwardness had been thick in each encounter, and neither of them had tried too much to pursue spending time together./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"After all, they would have more than enough time for one another once their contracts were fulfilled. Secretly, Charis had hoped she would not be able to produce an heir, and that she would then be forced to divorce her arranged husband. However, if she was infertile, which she did not yet know, that would only end in no one ever marrying her. No man of reasonable blood, at least./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Her mother, Gwendolyn Myles, was a Pureblood, and though she didn't carry the name of one of the sacred twenty-eight, she was from a respectable Wizarding family that aged back nearly a thousand years. Her father had given her the name of one of the twenty-eight oldest Wizarding families – Greengrass. It had been Sebastian Frederick Greengrass who had arranged her marriage to her newly wed husband with one of the Black family Heirs, Lycoris Circinus Black. Her husband, Cetus Lycoris Black, had older blood than she had, but the marriage had still been arranged./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"emHer husband/em. The two words together had been her nightmare since the day she had been informed of the contract, and now, as the two of them lay next to each other, she feared them even more. She was Charis Josephine Black. She wasn't a Greengrass anymore./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"„My Lady?" He asked, and the formality of his words was more fitting than her wedding gown. She closed her eyes against the sound, wishing his voice away./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Silence took over their dimly lit room. He had lain down on the bed first, short dark hair pressing against velvet pillows, his wedding robes still on. She had joined him a minute later in her own gown, not wanting to undress./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"„My Lady?" He tried again, and she could tell he was the quietly persistent type. Patient, he would try again and again until she answered him. She didn't want to./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"„Charis." She corrected him. They were sharing a bed, and she did not wish for the awkward formality to mark this place forever. This was their manor, a gift from her parents to his, a gift for wedding their daughter of lower blood status. She had never been here before./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"„Charis, then." He spoke again, and with her eyes still closed, she listened to his voice. It was smooth, as if his vocal cords were made of silk and coated in honey./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"„Yes?"/p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He touched her hair. Her shoulders tensed and breathing stopped. He was beautiful, with grey eyes and black hair, perfect skin and the bone structure of a prince, yet she couldn't open her eyes to look at him. He gazed at her, Stormy eyes clouded with their hoods and heavy eyelashes, tracing the movement his pale hand made through her meticulously plaited golden locks./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"„Look at me." He was twenty-one years old, and she was just eighteen. He had watched her close her eyes, as if the motion could make him disappear. He had not asked for this, either, but they had it, and it was what it was. She would have to look at him at some point during the evening./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He had asked her to look at him. She didn't. She didn't want to. It was her wedding night, and she had always known what was to come. They were to seal the marriage with their bodies tonight. They had never touched more than the kiss that had bound them tonight. They were bound. By rings and by magic, by a quill and ink. By an oath. She didn't want to touch him./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"She opened her eyes. He thought her brave for this, and she thought herself a coward. Slowly, she turned to look at him, and their eyes met, blue-green and grey, vulnerability and steadiness. They were both uncertain, yet he masked it better./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He had done this before. He had kissed naked flesh and touched pleasure with his fingertips. She hadn't./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He could tell in that one glance. He knew. Slowly, he leaned forward, and the night outside had already fallen, the only light in the room the gift the Moon was blessing them with. Shadows danced across her face, cold air fresh from the open window. His lashes were darker than hers, hers a dusky golden. Her swirling ocean eyes looked at him with such fear that it was he who let his eyelids fall this time. But only for a second. He opened them a heartbeat later. They had stilled, and she was looking at him. She seemed slightly more at ease than before./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He leaned in again. From the foot of the bed, it would have seemed as if they were barely moving, but they were drawing closer, a milimetre a time until their lips were just a whisper apart, and her breath hitched, and he blinked, twice, thrice, and then they were touching./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Their eyes closed, and his fingers tightened in her hair. It was soft at first, but then he licked her closed lips, and she opened them, their tongues meeting. But it lasted only a second, and she was on the other side of the bed, her back facing him, his shocked expression unseen by her once again tightly shut eyes./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"He sat up then, and watched her with curiosity. She was so shy, and she seemed like she might stand up and run away at any moment. He leaned against one of the bed posters and watched her silently for a long time. She didn't move, and he didn't try to touch her. When he did, it was with words, not with skin./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"„We don't have to do this tonight if you don't want to." They didn't know each other, and he doubted he would enjoy anything that was to ensue if she did not. It was not in his nature to take without being given, and receive without himself giving in turn./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"She turned to look at him, and when she saw he was sitting, she too lifted herself with her hands, leaning against the poster opposing his./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"„It's never been up to what I want." It was the sad truth, and he knew the meaning of her words all too well. He had lived them, himself, and knew of the pain the reality they spoke of caused. It had never been up to what he wanted, either. But now that the two of them were both in a place they had never wanted to be, he made a resolution./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"„It's never been up to what I want, either. But I promise you, I promise you, Charis Josephine Black, that from now on, here, in our home, it will always be about what we want."/p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"She looked at him differently this time, differently than she had ever looked at him before. Her eyes were harder, and it was something more than just the mask a Pureblood knew to wear. It was something much stronger, something that came from within. Defiance and resolution. And in that moment, he knew that she agreed. It was this moment that he slowly, but very strongly, started to fall in love with her./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"It was the way he looked at her, the way he said his name like it was hers, the way he made it hers like no marriage ever could. It was the way that he said 'we' as if she belonged to him, as if they belonged together. It was the way he sat there, promising something beautiful of the wreckage they were in that she realised how extremely lucky she was that her parents had chosen this man to be her husband. In that moment, she was almost thankful./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"She looked at him, and he gazed back at her. And she made up her mind. She scooted up to him, until she sat before him. With trembling fingers she touched the front of his robes, and he watched her, wonder in his eyes. Her face settled into a look of determination and she took off the top layer of his dress robes. He was left in black pants and a dress shirt./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Always having been intuitive, and the type to perceive rather than throw himself in blindly, he watched her as she worked, knowing that if he touched her, he would scare her away and she would flee./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Her up-do was half pulled out from where he had knotted his hand through it, and he studied it, transfixed. When she undid the top button of his shirt, his head snapped to look at her face again. Young, with soft skin, a sharp jaw, and a cute little nose, she seemed so certain in what she was doing, so very different from the small, shy girl she had been just minutes ago. But he saw that girl in her, buried deep, and, still resolute on not touching her, he breathed in through his nose instead. She smelled like the petals of flowers, like his mother's garden after evening rain. She smelled like the nights he had climbed out his window and sat on the roof of his family manor like some common child, watching the stars. She smelled of wind, and of the first time he had sat on a broomstick. She was the lonely, solitary parts of his childhood, and it made his heart ache, chest constricting. His jaw clenched./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"She noticed, and moved away as if scared that she had hurt him. This time, he knew that touching her was the appropriate thing to do. With all but one button of his shirt undone, he raised his hand and cupped her cheek in his palm. Surprisingly, she leaned in, closing those water-coloured eyes once more. In the white-bluish light of the moon, her eyelids were pattered like a Fairy's, her lashes casting dark shadows along her cheeks. She seemed so peaceful right now, and she seemed to fit into her body – her blond hair, her blue eyes, her soft features, her sharp jaw, her light eyebrows./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"Slowly, he took off her gown, the white shining through the darkness, and she reached out again, and soon all they had worn was lying on the floor, and the moonlight outlined the curves and angles of their bodies, and he touched her, and she touched him, and it was strange and awkward, because they had spoken only a few odd words to each other since they met, and she was scared, and he was careful, but when it ended, he wouldn't have taken it back for anything./p  
p style="max-height: 999999px; font-family: Verdana, Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px;"And neither would have she./p 


End file.
